bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/486308; this version posted December 3, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 Differential responses of antioxidants and dehydrin expression in two 2 switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) cultivars contrasting in drought 3 tolerance 4 5 6 Running title: Switchgrass drought Tolerance and Antioxidant 7 8 Yiming Liu#1,2, Guofu Hu#3,2, Guoqiang Wu4,5, Hengfu Huan1, Xipeng Ding1, Linling Yan1, 9 Xinyong Li1,Pandao Liu1, Changjun Bai1, Guodao Liu1, Bingyu Zhao5*, Xunzhong Zhang2* 10 11 1 Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences 12 (CATAS) / Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Resources and Germplasm Enhancement in Southern 13 China, Ministry of Agriculture, Hainan Danzhou 571737, P.R. China 14 2 Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA 15 3 College of Animal Science and Technology, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, 16 Heilongjiang Province, China 17 4School of Life Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou730050, 18 P.R.China 19 5Department of Horticulture, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA 20 21 *Corresponding authors: Xunzhong Zhang (Email:
[email protected], Phone: 540-231-9788, Fax: 22 540- 231-3431), and Bingyu Zhao (Email:
[email protected], Phone: 540-231-1146, Fax: 540- 23 231-3083) 24 # These authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/486308; this version posted December 3, 2018.